Save Me
by bluegames
Summary: he's going to keep taking & taking & taking from you until you nothing left to give. watch out, little girl: he's going to swallow you whole. Drake/Oc.
1. try anyway

Drake was selfish, she knew that. She has always known that, even when she first met him, back when she was wide-eyed and innocent. After spending months holed up as his dirty little secret, she has gotten to…understand him, in a way. They'll just be lying there, staring at the ceiling in silence, when he releases a little piece of himself.

'_I hate Caine_,' he'd say, turning onto his side and looking her in the eyes, which was such a rare occurrence it shocked her speechless, '_And_ _one day, I'm going to get rid of him for good and rule the FAYZ._'

She didn't know much about the world he – they, she supposed – lived in. She didn't even see the infamous '_poof'_ that started it all. Drake had found her a month or so after it happened; a princess stuck in her tower, and decided to keep her there. He barely talked about it, the FAYZ, but he mentioned people. Sam, Caine, Astrid, Diana. Those were the ones she was the most familiar with. He despised all of them, but Caine particularly. Some days he was so angry with him, he'd enter the two-bedroom apartment that was her home and smash a lamp against the wall. If she did anything wrong on those days, he'd take that terrible whip arm of his and smash her against the wall, too.

But no matter how much he hurt her, she kept forgiving him. Because even if he never said it aloud, he needed her. She felt it in the way he gripped her hand, the way protected her (_'No one's allowed to hurt you, 'cept me, okay?'_), the way he buried his face in her hair in the middle of the night after he had a nightmare, chanting her name over and over.

He had a special name for her. 'Lux'. It wasn't the name her long-gone mother called her, or even the name that was written on her birth certificate. But when he came into her life, everything changed…so why shouldn't something as insignificant as her name change, too?

Looking back on it now, she sees that their relationship was broken from the start. Drake pushed the limits, it was what he did. But he pushed her too far. She wasn't meant to bend this way; she was meant to marry a nice man and live in a nice house with three kids and a white picket fence. _Happily ever after._ But even if she wasn't supposed to see the dark side of life, she stood strong. She became accustomed to Drake's ways: she knew when talking would get a punch to the face, she knew when he needed her to latch onto him and swear that she was his, she though she knew _him_.

_-"Save me"-_

And now she's here, a shattered mess of a girl, lying in a pool of her own blood, looking into the emotionless eyes of the man who 'needed' her.

_-"I don't know how"-_

She's sees it now; she was stupid. Because behind all the bravado and threats, she honestly thought Drake Merwin loved her.

_-"Try anyway"-_


	2. the art of breaking

It wasn't her fault. Drake had been gone four weeks, the longest he'd ever stayed away, and she was worried. She was afraid of the outside world, of the FAYZ, but Drake was basically the bane of her existence and if something happened to him, she just might…Well, she didn't know what she would do, because she had never faced something like this before. Drake _always_ came back for her. She was scared and anxious and she didn't know what to do, so she went looking for him.

She was just figuring how to unlock the door when it flew open, knocking her to the floor. It was Drake. Almost crying with relief, she stood up. He took a few steps towards her, but stopped abruptly. His icy eyes darted from the backpack at her feet, to her hiking boots, to the makeshift lock pick, before finally resting on her.

The look Drake gave her made tears come to her eyes. She knew what he thought, that she was trying to escape. Pleading with him, desperate to explain, she inched towards him. He stood there, staring at her with haunted eyes. They stayed like that for a long moment, him just standing there and her with tears on her cheeks.

She should have run. Locked herself in her room until he calmed down. But she hadn't lost all her innocence, and she believed with that barely pure heart hers that he wouldn't hurt her.

"Drake, I-"

He snapped, she broke, and the anomaly that was _them_ ended.

And she thought they were _forever_.

(But she's always getting these things wrong, isn't she?)


	3. love is for the dreamers

She was going to die. It was inevitable. At least three of her ribs were broken, along with her arm, her back was bloody from his whip hand, and she couldn't speak because of the swelling in her throat. He _strangled_ her, that fucking bastard. As he was doing it, his eyes detached and cold and _wrong_, she cried out for him. Not for the merciless man beating her, but the one who would move Heaven and earth to keep her, the one who secretly liked cuddling with her, too, the one who would plant light, butterfly kisses on her forehead when he thought she was sleeping, and the one who swore to kill anyone that touched her.

'_Drake, please. I lo-"_

'_Shut up, you stupid whore! You were going to leave me!'_

'_No, you don't understand, Drake…!"_

He goes into blind rages sometimes. When he finally comes to his senses, he's tired and dizzy and doesn't have a full recollection of what exactly happened. She had only seen this once, and it terrified her then, and terrified her now. Last time, he had snapped out of it rather quickly. She had only one broken bone, her finger, and forgave him within the week.

But this was different, because he was too angry, too hurt, and too _insane_ to come back over the edge. He was going to keep beating her until she died. And when he finally came to, he'd shake her body and scream for her and maybe he'd even cry…but guess what? She didn't care. Once upon a time, seeing Drake hurt broke her heart. Now, it gave her a sick sort of satisfaction. She _hated_ him and if she survived this, she wasn't going to stay here. She was going to be free.


	4. the liberty of goodbye

He got Lana. He had left her there and went to kidnap the fucking _Healer_. If she could've, she would've killed him. No regrets, no remorse: just like he'd always told her. She almost felt bad for the Healer girl. Being taken by someone like Drake to do something like _this_ must be terrifying. As Lana fixed her with shaking hands, she stared up at Drake. His face a blank slate, meaning it hadn't hit him yet. She wondered when reality was going to set in, when he was going to feel the regret. If he was even capable of emotion besides hate, that is.

When the Healer left, she was still sore. Her back wounds weren't healed yet and she was covered in blood. The worse part was Drake didn't even stick around. He disappeared out the door mere minutes after Lana did, leaving Lux alone to her pain. She thought he would come back in the morning, like he always did, crawling back to her with apologies. But he didn't. He didn't come that morning, or the one after that, or the one after that, or the one after that.

When two weeks passed with still no sign of Drake, she decided he abandoned her. Angry and injured, she struggled on without him in the little apartment that used to be _their_ home. But there was a problem. She didn't have any food. Drake had always brought some when he came to visit her and with him gone, she was running out fast.

She was still terrified of the FAYZ and didn't dare try to leave yet. But she was _so hungry_ and she was at her breaking point. She needed to eat.

Apparently, Lana thought so, too, because the slightly older girl showed up at her doorstep with a small package of food around three weeks after the incident. She healed the rest of Lux's wounds and the girls bonded over the meal. Lana showed up everyday after that and soon, they were friends.

Lana told her about the FAYZ. About the hunger, about the sickness, about the violence, but also about the love (the way Lana told it, Sam and Astrid weren't the evildoers Drake depicted them as. Lana said Sam was a hero and Astrid was kind and they were so perfect for each other, it kind of made her sick) and the family (because the loyalty between Mother Mary and Brother John was so strong, Lana said it broke her heart). Lux found herself slowly falling for this strange world, so when Lana asked if she wanted to come and join the other's on the outside, she wholeheartedly agreed.

* * *

As she stepped out of her home and into the dry air and sunshine of Perdio Beach, her heart about to burst with excitement, she wondered if that was what happiness felt like.


	5. after the calm, before the storm

Lux was happy. It was strange, that feeling of contentment. She was used to being hurt and sick and _afraid_, not this warm cocoon of- well, not safety exactly, but as close as someone as scarred as her can feel. In the three months that she had been at Perdido Beach, she had grown outside the shell that Drake had set up for her. She didn't go by Lux, for one. Although she wasn't sure it was because she wanted to escape Drake or keep his memory close. That didn't really matter, though, did it? She was no longer Lux, no longer that injured, broken girl, beaten by a monster day after day.

She was Emily Wyatt, a girl with confidence and friends and _safety_.

"Hey, Emily!" Edilio called, snapping her out of her daydream as he raced to catch up with her. Smiling slightly, Lux managed a little wave. Even after months of being around Edilio and the others, she was still jumpy around them. Drake had burned his impressions of them pretty deep into her mind: she still fought to see them as the good people they were.

"Hi," she said, continuing on her way to the fields. As usual, Edilio fell into step beside her. This happened every day since she'd arrived. Edilio did patrol near the fields at this hour, and Lux worked there. The routine of walking together sort of fell into place. Most of the time, they didn't talk. The steady silence of her walks with Edilio was a much needed comfort- though she'd never admit that- because everyone knew that Lux had lived with Drake and they were constantly bothering her about it.

-"_did he break any of your bones? torture you?"_

_-"does he drink blood? i've heard that he's, like, a _vampire_ or something."_

_-"how was he in bed?- c'mon, be honest, i won't tell"_

She just wanted them to shut up. Didn't they have better things to do, like fend of starvation or something?

That reminded her of another unlikely friend she had made here in Perdido. Mary.

The girl was depressed and anorexic and had a whole heaping pile of issues. But maybe that was why Lux liked her… they were kindred spirits, of a sort. Mary was the only one Lux talked to about Drake, with the occasional exception of her closest friend, Lana.

"Emily…" Edilio said, once again pulling her out of her runaway-train stream of thoughts.

"Yeah?" she asked, keeping her eyes locked on her feet. _These shoes are getting too old_, she noticed as she waited for his answer. _Maybe Albert will sell me some… oh, but then I'll have to give up my food for at least today to pay for them and-_

"Um, how good are you with a knife?"

That got her attention.

"_What_?!" she demanded, her eyes snapping up to his face. Tanned with eyes old beyond his years, Edilio looked very worried.

"We've kind of got an issue," he said, staring up beyond her, into the abandoned, open desert road.

A sick feeling blossomed in her stomach. Turning around slowly, she prayed to whatever God that was listening.

_Please don't let it be him, not him, please, please __**don't let it be Drake.**_

But apparently God hated her, because there _he_ was, Drake, cracking his whip against empty air as he smirked and said, "Hi, Lux."


	6. this is your wake up call

Drake had never thought of himself as '_in love_'. Love was for the weak, the pathetic. And you could call Drake many things, many terrible, awful things, but _weak_ wasn't one of them. He didn't need anyone, especially a girl.

Not until Lux, at least.

The day he found her, locked in her small apartment she shared with her selfish bitch of a mother, seemed almost dream-like. Looking back on it now, without her to hold and kiss, it seemed like all of it was just a strange trance. A wonderful, nightmarish dream. Silvery princess curls, wide sky-colored eyes, and wintery skin marked with delicate swirls of blue veins. She was perfect, and it killed him.

He felt unbalanced around her. Like he was falling, tumbling deeper and deeper and deeper into something that he didn't entirely want. Because, like he said, he never wanted '_love_'.

((what an awful word))

After months of being with Lux, stuck in that horribly beautiful fantasy world, he couldn't deny it anymore.

He was in love.

Of course, this realization rocked him to his very core. He didn't ask for this, didn't _want_ this, but somehow, here it was. The problem was, though, Drake didn't know _how_ to be in love. He never had someone care for him his entire life, and now suddenly he was so filled with it, it made his head spin. So he struck out. At her, at Lux.

Maybe he went too far, that night. Maybe he should have heard her out. Listened to her excuses. But he just couldn't. Because Lux _belonged_ to him. She was his, and she tried to leave.

And now here he is, alone and miserable, because no matter how much he tried to show her he was _sorry_, she left anyway.

He wondered if this is him waking up.


	7. come home

Her first thought was to cry. She's not sure _why_, though. Maybe because seeing him still made her heart race, not entirely just in the im-about-to-die way. Her second was that he looked _terrible_. Thinner than she remembered, with hair scraggly and bags under his eyes. She resisted the urge to run to him. Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard. Every time she looked at him, she saw his expressionless face as she lied bleeding on the floor. A sick feeling rose in her stomach, obliterating any thoughts of missing him. He almost _killed_ her.

Her hand shot out of it's own accord, grabbing Edilio's arm. She tugged him backwards, desperate to get them away from the monster before them.

"What?" he asked, swinging his whip arm around casually, "You afraid?"

She was surprised her voice didn't shake when she answered, "Little bit, yeah. But I tend to get like that when psycho's corner me on the way to work."

Edilio glanced at her, surprised, while Drake just laughed, "Getting some spunk in you, I see."

She glared. He held up both his arms up in the universal form of, _hey, don't look at me_.

"Leave us alone, Drake," she said, still yanking at Edilio's stubborn form. Lowering his arms, Drake stepped closer and softened his voice, "I came to get you, Lux."

She felt her shoulders tense at the name.

"Come home," he whispered, sounding almost vulnerable. Her eyes landed on his, and a familiar tug at her heart had her leaning towards him. He was sorry, she could tell. Maybe if she just heard him out…

And that's when Sam decided to show up.


End file.
